The Legend of One Word per Minute ; A Tribute to Stephen Hawking

“I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep
asking these 'how' and 'why' questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.”

One of the greatest minds of all time, the mind that
explored the hidden corners of the universe, the mind that refused to find
comfort in delusions even while suffering for over 55 years, has ceased to
exist at the age of 76. He was the wheelchair scientist who prepared lectures
just by twitching his cheek and the visionary physicist who modeled an
expanding universe that is both bounded in space and unbounded in time while
eliminating the god from his equations.

Just like the 11-dimensional string models founded on his
theories, the multidimensional character of of Stephan Hawking ranged from a
rebel who declined knighthood as a protest against the government’s limited
science funding to the grown-child who went racing around in wheelchair, having
fun in knocking off people.

As an undergraduate in Oxford at the age of 17, he spent
less than an hour per day studying. Due to his lazy studying patterns, he almost
scored a second class and was then awarded a first class by the viva evaluaters
who could see the genius behind his witty smile. He was also in the rowing team
and was also interested in classical music and science fiction. It was Oxford
where he became obsessed with black holes where space and time comes to a
standstill, a passion that defined his career.

Diagnosed at 21, the rare, slow form of ALS made hawking
bound to a wheelchair for life and use various tools to communicate as disease
progressed. In 2005, when he could click no more, he was attached to a device designed
by Intel. This new device was a combination of a sensor attached to his glasses
that reads his cheek movements to select letters and a word prediction system.
He continued his academic work, preparing lectures at the rate of one word per
minute and delivering them to the audience worldwide.

Known as the Einstein of Black Hole Theory, Hawking’s work
is both revolutionary as well as a perfect example for scientific thinking. He
proposed that the entire universe could have started from a black hole
singularity. Later in his life, he proposed the Hartle–Hawking state, thus
proving himself wrong and showing that universe could be bounded while having
no beginning, smoothing the singularity before big bang by modelling the
universe with imaginary time. In this premise, asking “what was there before
big bang” was like asking “what lies in the north of north pole?”. His
willingness to admit mistakes and change opinion when sufficient evidence or
reason is provided, is a valuable lesson to the mankind and a firsthand
application of scientific thinking. Hawking radiation, the phenomenon that
explains the evaporation of black holes with time and their eventual deaths, is
considered as the crown jewel of his career and is about to be put on his
tombstone at his request.

Hawking was a man who “lived” his life to the fullest from a
wheelchair, more cheerfully than most of us. He was known for his sharp wit and
sense of humour that reflects in his lectures, books and answers to questions.
In 2006, he participated in a zero-gravity flight in a free-falling aircraft
and flew in a hot air balloon on the celebrations of his 60th
birthday. In 2009, he threw a party for future time travelers to which, of
course, nobody turned up. He started a bet with a physicist to be paid for
subscription of an adult magazine in case if his black hole theory is proven
wrong.

The secret to a well-lived happy and contented life is to have
the right attitude that stems from a coherent and liberating personal
philosophy. Hawking’s personal philosophy founded on scientific method of
thinking, is as important as his academic achievement. Here was a man who was
not afraid to defy illusions and comfort himself in the thoughts of afterlife.
While the social media forces the popular notion of “Rest in Peace”, he himself
viewed his death as: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working
when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down
computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Personally, his ‘A Brief History of Time’ and the
corresponding series in Discovery Channel fueled my curiosity in cosmology,
making me read about everything from strings to black holes to the entire
universe. Through his cameo appearances in The Big Bang Theory (TBBT),
Simpsons, Star Trek and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series, he
captured the public interest as a pop icon for theoretical physics.

Therefore, as an undergraduate in STEM field, Hawking’s
books, thoughts and personal philosophy have been major factors that steered me
towards the mysterious phenomena of the nature and the ways we can utilize them
for the progress of mankind while living a cheerful personal life.

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